Home / Game Recap / And we’re back: Caps beat Sabres 6-4!

And we’re back: Caps beat Sabres 6-4!

By Peter Hassett

 8 Comments

January 14, 2021 9:39 pm

Hey! Hockey’s back. Let’s pretend the pandemic doesn’t exist for a few minutes. The Caps just beat the Sabres, starting off the Laviolette era in a sloppy but successful manner.

Alex Ovechkin served up his Only True Center, Nicke Backstrom, who scored the first goal of the season. The Sabres responded with a power-play goal from Taylor Hall, who I am sad to report really does play for the Sabres now. TJ Oshie turned Ovechkin’s rebound into a goal, and that got us through the first period.

The second period was more of the (good) same, with John Carlson scoring on a breakaway. The Caps killed a penalty, and then Brenden Dillon finally got his first goal as a Cap. Tobias Reider got a greasy goal late in the period, but the Caps led 4-2 after two periods.

Winning a board battle and then making a swift pass across center ice, the Sabres made it a one-goal game early in the third, but Jakub Vrana responded immediately, stealing a puck from Eric Staal to score solo. With an extra attacker, Victor Olofsson buried a one-timer to make it a one-goal game late. No worries: Garnet Hathaway sunk an empty-netter.

Caps win!

  • After watching him for nearly twenty minutes as a Capital, I can now confirm that Zdeno Chara is my largest hockey son to date.
  • Jakub Vrana‘s bridge deal ends this season, and he’s gonna get paid. He robbed Eric Staal to score a big-boy goal in the third period. I think it’s gonna be a big year for Young Jake.

  • In his first game as the Caps’ undisputed intercontinental starting goalie, Ilya Samsonov got lit up four times. Ian and I disagree about how much to blame Sammy was for those — Eichel can sure move the puck well laterally. But I bet Friday night will bring us the NHL debut of Vitek Vanecek. I’m psyched.
  • Future Kraken TJ Oshie had a big night with two assists and a goal. I’m going to call him Future Kraken a lot to steel myself against imminent heartbreak.
  • We were told to expect the defenders to get more involved in the offense under Peter Laviolette, but the Carlson breakaway goal was ridiculous. Meanwhile, Carlson was on ice for the final three Sabres goals.
  • Pat wants me to say that Brenden Dillon‘s outlet pass on the Backstrom goal was good. Whatever. Fine. There ya go, Pat.

  • Nic Dowd had two penalties in his first game, the second one being a hit to Eric Staal’s head. There have been way too many high hits in these first two nights of hockey, and Dowd should be way smarter than this. He’s one of the most important PK role-players too; he needs to stay out of the box. (Lots of debate about that hit in our Discord though. I’m agnostic.)

Well that’s one down.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1/30 2/1 3/3 3/5 4/8 4/11 4/18 4/20
2/27 3/1 3/7 3/9 3/25 3/26 4/2 4/4
2/7 2/9 3/11 3/13 4/17 4/27 5/7 5/8
1/26 1/28 3/15 3/16 4/6 4/6 4/22 4/24
1/17 1/19 2/14 2/16 2/23 2/25 4/29 5/1
2/4 2/20 2/21 3/19 3/28 3/30 5/3 5/5
🌮 1/15 1/22 1/24 2/11 2/13 4/13 4/15

What a strange game. We will need a lot more time to figure out the identity of this new iteration of the team, and I’m not sure how reliable these first ten days — containing four games against the Sabres — will be in that effort. Thursday night was a mix of preseason hockey languidness, but with frenzied moments of playoff intensity, but also with everyone seeming sorta doped up on quaaludes.

Still, this was a good effort overall. The Caps sure owned the puck a lot (with one Eller-shaped exception), though they didn’t protect their crease as well as I would have hoped. Also Ovechkin didn’t score like two or three goals, which just felt wrong to me.

Maybe he’ll rectify that on Friday night, when we do this exact same thing again. We’re back!

RMNB Coverage of Caps at Sabres

Screenshot courtesy of NBC Sports Washington

, ,